Raspberry pi – First Login, Starting the Gui and installing applications
First Login
Once you have inserted your SD card into your raspberry pi and turned it on via the power switch for the transformer (No power button on a raspberry pi) the boot up screen should appear.
If you have set up your SD card correctly you should see a raspberry pi logo in the top right hand corner and logs of white writing (System boot information) once done you have a login prompt.
The username and password for “squeeze” raspberry pi is
Username – Pi
Password – raspberry
You will now be asked to set the time as the raspberry pi does not come with an on board real-time clock
You are now in the Debian Command Line and can now start playing with your raspberry pi
Starting the Gui
If you want the raspberry pi GUI then type the following command in the Debian command line
startx
The screen will now go black and then the raspberry pi logo will appear on the screen.
Installing applications
In the GUI left click in the bottom left hand corner on the blue cross to display the options menu (Like the start button in windows)
Go up to “other” and then scroll down the list until you get to “terminal” and left click
You should now see the “terminal” window which is just like a cmd box in windows
The first thing we have to do is update the system with the following command
sudo apt-get update
(we use sudo command for “run as admin” as the standard account is not a admin)
This will update the repository on the raspberry pi with locations of software and general software updates.
To search for software by name type the following command
sudo apt-cache search
Example (sudo apt-cache search chromium)
To install software by name
Sudo apt-get install
Example (sudo apt-get install chromium)
To uninstall software
Sudo apt-get remove
Example (sudo apt-get remove chromium)
Frustrated IT Engineer 
switch on my Raspberry and logged in, Start x wont get me a GUI as its an unrecognised command. The sudo software updates works!!! can anyone help please?
Try “startx” instead of “Start x” (all lower case, no space and no quotes). I don’t own a Pi yet but hope it helps
If the default screen layout i too small for the menu bar to be displayed, is there a keyboard alternative command?
“sudo startx” starts the GUI (Grafic User Interface) as Admin … you have full access to all drives an directories
M4RCJO wrote :- ‘“sudo startx” starts the GUI as Admin … you have full access to all drives an directories’
… and goes against good practice. You should only log in as Admin to do admin tasks, which are generally done better in command line (CLI) mode anyway. And in CLI mode you are less likely to forget you are in Admin mode. There are some GUI apps that require Admin rights, like the Synaptic package manager, but they will ask for the Admin password when you start them and return you to ordinary user mode when you close them.
Operating a PC in Admin mode all the time, which is what you seen to be suggesting, was an early DOS/Windows practice that started before the days of malware and is now deprecated even by Microsoft.